A Plan for Building Honesty

City leaders are readying an unusual new weapon against corruption and turnover among their municipal police officers: giveaway homes.

Under a plan nearing adoption, officers with good work records could move into houses that are to be built by the city on municipal parcels, paying only nominal rent. Those who stay on the force for 12 years without disciplinary problems would gain outright ownership.

The idea, proposed by Mayor Francisco Vega de la Madrid after his election last year, passed a key hurdle last week with approval by a joint City Council committee assigned to work out details. Councilman Renato Sandoval Franco, who has led the proposal, said final council approval later this month is a formality.

“We’ll be building houses within a couple of months,” Sandoval said.

Officials say that Tijuana would be the first city in Mexico, where corruption among poorly paid police is endemic, to provide housing for officers. The city scheme is meant to help clean up the image of a force of 2,200 by reducing the temptation to seek payoffs from errant motorists and drug dealers. It is part of a wider effort in Tijuana to make police work more appealing and keep good officers on the job.

Police salaries were boosted by a third this year. Similar raises are planned for the next two years so that wages will have doubled by 2001. Despite the hefty hike, starting pay for local police is abysmal by U.S. standards: about $100 a week.

Municipal officials are also working with the national Chamber of Commerce on creation of an officers’ discount card for shopping at participating stores. And the city approved an insurance plan that would cover some legal costs for officers involved in job-related shootings.

The housing strategy touches on two pressing Tijuana issues: trustworthiness of police agents and a citywide shortage of housing. Officials say it is next to impossible for local police officers to buy homes because their low pay and the risky work make lenders reluctant to provide credit. Help offered to other government employees through their unions is unavailable to municipal police officers, who are not unionized.

Many officers end up living with relatives or paying rents that can eat up half a month’s salary.

Ten-year police veteran Macario Ramirez Enriquez, his wife and their four children live with his mother-in-law and a niece in a working-class neighborhood on the south edge of town. Ramirez and his wife, who pitches in by selling secondhand clothing and footwear at swap meets, have long wanted the privacy of their own home but are unable to buy.

Ramirez, an amiable 40-year-old who works six day weeks supervising a motorcycle patrol, is on a list of 132 officers who qualify for a home.

“I’d like to have a house that’s all mine,” he said. “I’d like to be able to come into my own home, turn on the television and watch the news and just relax.”

The city would build 50 duplex units on an outlying parcel between downtown Tijuana and Rosarito and later add 25 more. A second phase would add 175 units on the east end of town. The 250 homes fall short of the 600 or more homes needed by the police force, but are a good start, Sandoval said. “We want a goal that’s reasonable,” he said.

The $2.6-million building cost would be offset by sales of several city parcels to private developers. Officers would pay a monthly rent of about $50 to cover maintenance. Participants, who are graded by seniority, number of dependents, lost work time and disciplinary troubles, will be picked by a citizens committee.

“They want to draw a better public employee, a public servant,” said police spokesman Lorenzo Garibay Martinez. “Now you have your little house and you have to keep your job. You’re going to avoid taking money. . . . You’re going to say no.”

One skeptic said it would be better to raise pay enough so officers could buy on the private market and leave City Hall out of the housing business.

“The most important thing for police isn’t housing. It’s wages,” said Victor Clark Alfaro, a Tijuana human rights activist. “Housing is a secondary matter.”

Boosters concede it will take more than perquisites to weed out the corruption, large and petty, that permeates Mexican government. Until a decade ago, Tijuana officers bought their own uniforms and weapons--and even paid commanders for the right to patrol choice spots--thus aggravating graft. Officials are trying a publicity campaign to persuade residents not to pay bribes.

Authorities hope the longevity requirement for ownership helps curb a turnover rate estimated at 10% to 15% yearly.

Municipal police patrol neighborhoods and write traffic tickets. While investigations of serious crimes are left to state and federal police, city police duty can be perilous in crime-troubled Tijuana. Three city officers have died on duty this year. Many officers leave within five years, weary of the strains of job and low pay. One veteran officer said, only half-joking, that he has made a career of police work by marrying into a wealthy family.

Ruben Mondragon, a 30-year-old patrol officer with five years on the force, said getting a city-provided duplex might encourage him to stay on the force after he and his wife have children.

Although his wife is eligible for housing aid through a government job, Mondragon said he wants to provide the home. “I feel it’s more a responsibility of the man,” he said.

For supervisor Ramirez, who dreamed as a child of becoming a cop and plans to remain one, the housing help would be a personal boost. But he said it also could lend a more favorable aura to police work in Tijuana.

“It’s going to be a big change for the image of the police, and for our lives,” he said.